Firestorm Blocking Update

Today Jessica Lyon posted on the Firestorm blog about Saturday’s 3 hour Q & A meeting. See: Q&A – Don’t be surprised… be informed.

In the comments the key question was asked. When will Phoenix blocking start? Jessica answered:

We haven’t decided yet what we will do with Phoenix. I may not have been clear at the meeting but the 3 version rule will start as of now, existing builds don’t really fall into the rule because we expect SSA will kill them off anyways. However if after SSA is fully deployed for a few weeks, we see there are still thousands on Phoenix, we ‘may’ decide to block it. I would rather avoid that if I could though.

Singularity 1.8.1 Released

With word coming that the Phoenix and older Firestorm viewers will be blocked from the SL Grid by the Firestorm Team, it would seem Singularity is in a good position to pick up more users. So, this new release is welcome news to many.

The headline for Singularity is that it gets Media On A Prim (MOAP) with this version.  There are 20± more additions to the Singularity Viewer.

See the announcement here: 1.8.1 – Prim Media.

Explosive Firestorm Meeting

This is going to be controversial and upset a lot of people. What it is, is a two hour and 45 minute video of a Firestorm meeting that showed up on YouTube. I didn’t see any announcement of the meeting. I do watch for such announcements. Some get past me. Whatever, there is some hot news in the video. If your in a hurry to see what is going to upset people, look for the red text (hint: page 2).

The video below is from a Firestorm-in-development viewer. It shows Materials in Firestorm. This version has not yet been released it is coming. It is not the video of the meeting.

[youtube gAdKIvbnQtA]

I doubt many will have time for watching the whole three hours of video of the August 10th Q & A meeting. I have a link to it at the end of the article. I decided to index it while I worked my way through it. It would be great if it were an MP3. I could play at 1.5x speed.

I am paraphrasing the whole video index I’ve made. My biases and prejudices can color what I hear. So, if something tics you off, watch the video then start your rant.

This is a Firestorm Q&A meeting where Jessica Lyon gets into some hard to swallow news. This is the end of the Phoenix Viewer.

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Second Life News 2013-32 #4

The third party viewer (TPV) development meeting was Friday August 9th. This is information from that meeting. This is usually the stuff that is fun to know.

TPV Developers Meeting 2013-32
TPV Developers Meeting 2013-32

Viewer Release Pipeline

There are currently 5 release candidates in the people line. Oz Linden says this is going to a larger number of candidates than he expects to be normal. This is a backlog of viewer work winding its way through the testing process.

The Vivox candidate viewer has made it all the way through the new process. It is now the new primary release for the SL Viewer 3.6.2-279258. The updates in that viewer are now being merged into the remaining candidate viewers. We should see those all updated during week 33.

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SL Materials Viewer 2013-32

We have a new version of the Materials Project Viewer as of August 8. It is version 3.6.3-279651. You can get the download here:  Official Alternate Viewers.

The Release Notes provides an impressive list of fixes, about 5.5 screens of JIRA items. There are 8 known problems listed. This is a significant improvement over the previous release.

This viewer is classed as a Project Viewer. So, if you opt’d in to use Release Candidate viewers you are NOT going to be running this one or any other ‘project’ viewers. At least I am pretty sure you won’t. So, what happens when you install this viewer? 

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CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34218 Released

CtrlAltStudio Viewer is about 3D display. This release is a ‘Main Release’ version.

This viewer does a render for use with shutter glasses, nVidia 3D Vision.

3D Controls in CtrlAltStudio Viewer
3D Controls in CtrlAltStudio Viewer

David Rowe the programmer says this is the final release for now. As the Lab and Firestorm update their viewers he will be updating the CtrlAltSudio Viewer.

Earlier I had speculated that he would be headed toward the Oculus Rift. But, in the announcement he says he will be waiting for the Lab to provide Oculus Rift support. So, am wrong. But, he does seem to intended to add Oculus support when it arrives.

Currently there are some interesting things going on. David reports he has been told about someone using an NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 Windows system, projecting onto a 9 foot screen (2.7m) using two Christie LX34 projectors through Polaroid filters…

Someone else is using 3DTV with the viewer.

David says, “GeForce Windows and GeForce Max OSX with NVIDIA 3D Vision appear to work well, at least with recent graphics chips.

You can download the viewer for Windows and Mac here: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34218.

Note: to use 3D Vision software you need a monitor that can handle 120hz display. Most flat panels are 60hz.